


A Balanced Diet is a Cookie and a Knife in Each Hand

by Windsett



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bantering, Comedy, Established Relationship, Family, Humor, Loki is a Good Bro (Marvel), M/M, POV Loki (Marvel), absurd comedy, baking in the kitchen, the couple that bakes together stays together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windsett/pseuds/Windsett
Summary: Loki agrees to bake Thor cookies for Christmas, because that’s the kind of brother he is. A good one.He gets given an oddly ominous book to follow a recipe out of, which he hates. But he also gets Stephen for an assistant, who he loves.
Relationships: Loki/Stephen Strange
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26
Collections: Froststrange Week 2021





	A Balanced Diet is a Cookie and a Knife in Each Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraWest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/gifts).



> For Froststrange Week Day 3 prompts ‘Domestic’ and ‘Hidden Treasure.’
> 
> It was fun to write the banter between Loki and Strange, and just to write something humorous and absurd featuring them.  
> Thank you for reading!

“Here you go.”

Loki had just a second to look up from his plate to see Thor looming over him, before he felt a weight thump down onto his lap.

“Look at what I just bought,” Thor said, a happy smile on his face.

“I am trying to have breakfast.”

“Surely you can do two things at once.”

The look Loki gave Thor would have felled most mortal men and a good portion of the immortal ones. Unfortunately Thor didn’t have a mortal man’s sense to spontaneously combust or an immortal one’s desire to challenge him to a fight.

Loki glanced down at what was now on his legs. It was a recipe book for baking Christmas cookies. It had a garish green cover and a cartoon chef perched precariously atop a Christmas tree that in turn was on top of a burning hot oven. Cookies and flames and candy canes were exploding out of it.

The chef’s smile was beaming and far, far too wide. Her eyes were also white and wild. She looked like she was on drugs. Well she’d have to be to think it was a good idea to balance on top of a spindly tree above a roaring oven. She looked both delighted and appalled at herself. In a large speech bubble erupting out of her mouth, she screamed ‘Create Perfect Christmas Cookies NOW. NOW!!!”

That was rude. It was rude and demanding and oddly ominous. To give himself time to think, Loki looked at the front cover picture again. The tree she was balanced on didn’t appear to be a load bearing one. The top looked like it was going to puncture her foot and impale her on it any second now. Well at least she wouldn’t feel too much pain, since she looked blitzed out of her mind.

Loki finally looked up at Thor. Thor looked down at Loki. Thor waggled his eyebrows and smiled as wide as the chef on the cover. Thor looked expectant. Thor looked eager. Thor clearly wanted a reaction from Loki, and had already convinced himself that he’d get the one he wanted.

Without saying a word, Loki looked down to his mug of steaming tea sitting on the table. He picked up the mug with one hand, swept the book off his legs with the other, sat back in his chair with a nonchalant air of deep contentment and took a sip of tea.

“Loki,” Thor said, wounded, “You knocked the book away.”

“What book?”

Thor sighed and picked the book up. He gave the doped up chef an apologetic smile and stroked the book’s spine.

“You promised,” Thor reminded Loki, as he put the book on the table next to Loki’s plate.

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” Loki said, as he made a game attempt to both divert Thor and make the most of these activity free seconds.

“You promised us that you’d bake for us. Us being Jane and I.”

“I’m aware of who the ‘us’ is.”

“You said that since you don’t have any money and didn’t want to steal from anyone this year, you’d bake us a delicious Christmas delight of our choice to warm our hearts and fill our stomachs.”

“I did not use those words. I would never use those words. Have you been taking what the chef has?”

“What? Look, the point is that you promised me. And we’ve decided that we’d like some cookies from this book. I found it in a pop-up Christmas market down a dark and fragrant side alley. You know the one, the one by the waste recycling plant on the more lively side of town. And I know that you don’t much care for Earth traditions or holidays, but I have two ways to convince you to bake cookies from this book.”

Loki sipped more of his tea. Maybe Thor would get bored and give up, or tell Loki to make another promise. Thor waited patiently. Maybe the chef was actually a witch, and had put a spell on Thor. Thor continued to wait, like a well trained dog who knows that if he holds out long enough and looks pathetic enough he’ll eventually get what he wants.

Loki finally made a reluctant and elegant hand gesture for Thor to continue.

“One,” Thor said, “Is that you promised me.”

That was fair.

“And two,” Thor said, his face contorting into a smile that sent alarm bells ringing behind Loki’s ribcage, “Is that you don’t have to bake them alone. I’ve arranged for an Assistant to help you.”

Loki’s alarm bells progressed to full ringing speed. If Thor had recruited Korg, the artist who’d drawn the chef on the cover of the book, Thor himself, or literally anyone else who lived in New Asgard, Loki would calmly lay the recipe book on top of Thor’s upturned palms, look Thor in the eyes, smile, and plunge both of his knives down through the cover of the book until they emerged out of Thor’s hands.

“Any guesses?” Thor beamed.

Loki slid his knives down his sleeves in preparation.

“It’s your Wizard.”

The knives retreated up his sleeves.

“I knew you’d like that,” Thor said in satisfaction.

“I don’t like any of this,” Loki said.

“Then why are you smiling?”

“I’m not smiling.”

“Yes you are.”

“No I’m not. Now give me that stupid book so I can get this over and done with.”

Still smiling as though he’d won a great prize, Thor picked up the book and dropped it back into Loki’s lap.

“He said he’d be here in an hour,” Thor said. “Actually he yelled that he’d be here as soon as he could, because he had to sort out a temporal monster or something first - something with tentacles and an enslaved robot in its head who wanted to enslave him in turn and then transform the Earth into a ball of blood and dust after stripping every sentient being of their skin, bones, meat and priceless free will. There might have been something else as well, something about unimaginable pain and suffering for all of eternity, but it was hard to hear him over the sucking sounds and the screaming. There was so much screaming. But I’m sure he’ll sort it all out. Have fun brother! And don’t eat them all! I’ll be back later and we can eat them together.”

* * *

“‘Follow this simple* recipe for perfect** Christmas cookies,’” Loki read out loud from the book propped open on the kitchen counter, “‘and you’re guaranteed,*** absolutely guaranteed,**** to create a treat that will startle, delight and amaze your guests!!!’”

Loki took a step back from the counter and the book, as if the chance of being infected by its contagious contents had just spiked.

“Was it necessary to say ‘asterix’ every other word?” Stephen asked him, in a tone that was even drier than the one Loki had used.

“I want you to enjoy the full cookie baking experience with me.”

“Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, read the corresponding note after you said the word the asterix relates to?”

“I could have, yes. I could have done several things with this book that Thor gave me, but given that they all involve destruction of property and several self-contained fires, I thought it best to abstain.”

“Self-discipline. I like it.”

“You won’t like what’s coming next.”

“What is coming next?”

“The actual baking.”

Stephen made a face. Loki made a face. They looked at each other. Their expressions softened, despite what they were about to do.

They were in the kitchen of Loki and Thor’s house in New Asgard, on a cold December day. The house could be described as snug, cozy, ramshackle, and cramped. Loki used all four terms interchangeably, depending on who he was talking to and what mood he was in.

“What ingredients do we need?” Stephen asked.

“I’m not sure,” Loki said.

“What temperature does the oven need to be heated to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Off to an excellent start I see,” Stephen nodded, as if these were the answers he’d always expected to receive. “Maybe we should consult the book and find out.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t start something we might not finish,” Loki said. “Neither of us have baked before, and this might all go terribly wrong. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving Thor something that would break his heart.”

“We’re doing this,” Stephen said bluntly.

“But-”

“We’re going to literally do this by the book. You promised him. I promised him. We’re going to bake him cookies and not magic them into existence. I’m not going to open a portal into a supermarket and take a packet of them and leave a ten dollar bill in its place. You’re not going to cast a glamour over a piece of fish and trick Thor into thinking it’s a cookie.”

“...why do you hate me?”

Stephen smiled. “I think you know how I feel about you.”

Loki tapped a finger against his leg. He glanced between Stephen and the recipe book. It would be so easy to give Thor a lump of cooked flour and sugar and say that he’d been baking them all day and that he was terribly sorry about the state of them, he’d tried his very best and knew it would never be good enough, and if Thor could give him just once more chance to bake them he’d do a much better job, say, next year? Thor would eat the cookie and say it was absolutely delicious and of course Loki had done his best, what was he talking about? He’d smile and Loki would smile in return. Loki would be smiling because he’d be reminiscing about what him and Stephen had actually been doing instead of baking. There would have been heat and hands and a satisfying series of events that resulted in something perfect.

“Turn the page,” Stephen said, breaking Loki out of his daydream.

“Perhaps we could take a quick break first,” Loki suggested innocently. “Gather our strength before starting work. We could go upstairs to my room? Or into the living room? Or upstairs to my room?”

The look on Stephen’s face said that he knew this suggestion would do anything but restore his strength if he agreed to it, and that he very much wanted to agree to it. Loki watched a panorama of expressions formulate, combine and dissipate across his face. He was battling with himself to ditch this task and allow Loki to lead him to somewhere with a soft surface. He wanted to spend any second he could with Loki. It was a thought that made Loki’s heart ache. Especially since Stephen’s remaining seconds were a drop in the ocean of time that Loki had left himself. And Stephen was choosing to spend some of these drops assisting him in a domestic chore, because he knew it would make his brother happy. Stephen was too good for this world.

Loki tilted his head slightly. Stephen also genuinely looked like he needed to rest and recover. What had that robot tentacle monster done to him? In Loki’s experience tentacles weren’t the most reliable source of enjoyment, so whatever had happened probably wouldn’t make it onto their list of fun things to try before they die. Or would they?

“OK fine,” Loki said, making a commanding decision before he could talk himself out of it and get distracted again, “Let’s get this over and done with.”

He looked back at the book. The words ‘OMG World’s Most Perfect Christmas Cookies! :D !’ screamed across the page and took up two thirds of it. He squinted at the list of ingredients that were squashed into the remaining space.

“This entire book looks like it’s covered in grease and stains,” Loki said. “I’m not touching it. I don’t care if I have to use a spell or a stick to turn the pages, I’m not touching this thing. It’s disgusting. It’s-”

A horrible possibility punched him in the face. What if the book was cursed? What if it was actually cursed? He’d considered it in jest earlier, but what if it actually was? Getting his fingers sticky by touching the pages was one thing, but what if it transferred something worse to him? What if Thor had been compromised by it, and soon him and Stephen would be as well? What if he was going to be responsible for causing harm to Stephen?

“Am I meant to guess what ingredients we need?” Stephen said. “We both know I’m amazing, but I can’t read minds. Yet. There’s an ancient text that looks promising, but Wong keeps hiding it from me. He said I can’t be trusted with such power, if you can believe that.”

Loki could in no way ask Strange to cast a diagnostic spell over the book to scan it for curses, hexes and trans-dimensional poisons. He’d rightly consider him absurd. An idiot. A scared absurd idiot. He’d then point towards the door over his back, stutter an excuse, and leave. Stephen would leave. He’d leave quickly. Stephen was going to leave him.

“No it’s fine,” Loki said.

“I didn’t...ask if anything was wrong,” Strange said slowly.

Oh.

“What’s going on?”

Loki clapped his hands and turned towards the fridge. “Eggs, flour, sugar, butter, chocolate chips, nuts, dried fruit and some other things. Basic stuff.”

“Loki.”

Stephen used the tone of voice that could freeze oceans and melt glaciers. He used it rarely, but when he did it activated something in Loki that forced him to compel. Maybe Stephen couldn’t read minds, but sometimes it seemed that he could control them.

“It’s nothing,” Loki said. “Really. I was just…” his eyes drifted towards the book. On the page opposite the ingredients list, there was a close up image of the wild-eyed chef stuffing a cookie into her huge mouth. Her lips stretched from ear to ear and her teeth were bone white and pointed, like a cave-dwelling carnivore who’s never been exposed to the sun.

Stephen took a diagonal step forward, so that he was closer both to the book and to Loki. He looked at the book.

“She needs to get out more,” he said. “Or stay locked inside.”

“She doesn’t look like a ringing endorsement for good health,” Loki agreed.

He hesitated.

“Or for someone’s safety.”

He could have been referring to food health and safety. He could have been making a circuitous reference to kitchen hygiene, or the basic tenets of keeping germs out of your body, or how you should be wary of someone if they looked like that in real life, that’s all. Anyone else would have thought so.

Stephen also hesitated.

And then he cast a spell.

Particles of ruby red and diamond white hung in the air and shone strongly. They bled a powerful aura of confidence and absolute safety. They arranged themselves into a red cross atop a field of white and descended into the book. They sunk through the pages, through the images, through the ink; they sunk to a level lower than the subatomic and scanned it all. The spell then ascended into the air in front of them. It turned into a white check-mark surrounded by a green circle and pulsed three times. The particles vanished.

“The book isn’t cursed,” Stephen said. “It’s just shit.”

Loki made no attempt to hide his smile. He took a step forward and to the side. His arm was nearly touching Stephen’s now.

“Thor called this book his ‘hidden treasure,’” Loki said. “I nearly vomited.”

“You’re my hidden treasure,” Stephen said. He laid the words on thickly, making it obvious that he was being ridiculous so that he could conceal an indestructible truth.

“In which case I bet you wished I’d stayed buried.”

“You know me too well Odison.”

“Yet another unfortunate thing about my life.”

“Do you want to know another thing?”

“If I must.”

“We’ve been in your kitchen for half an hour and haven’t started baking yet.”

“I already knew that. Try again.”

“Challenge accepted.”

Stephen made a complex gesture with his hands. A small golden packet appeared in them.

“These chocolates are some of the most expensive in the universe,” Stephen explained, as if he’d created them himself and was now finally able to show them off to an adoring crowd. “They’re of the finest quality, obviously, but they’re not on the market yet. This is one of only five batches in our universe that have been made. I went through some horrible things to get these. Horrible, horrible things. The tentacle robot was a walk in the park compared to battling the distributor of these. I thought we could use them as toppings for the cookies.”

Loki looked at the bag of chocolates. The packaging itself looked more valuable than the combined wealth of everything on Earth.

“Thor won’t care,” Loki said. “He’ll stuff one of these into his mouth and swallow it without it ever touching his sides. You could give him one of these exquisite creations or a smear of off-brand chocolate that’s been stuck down the back of the sofa for a year and his reaction will be the same.”

“Delight?”

“Absolute delight.”

“Well in that case,” Strange said, as he untied the ribbon holding the packet closed, “We shouldn’t waste them. I’ll start on these, and you start searching the sofa.”

“Save me at least one of them,” Loki said.

“Sure.”

Loki collected the ingredients from the fridge and several cupboards. They were suspiciously well stocked. It was as if someone had been out shopping and bought everything that most of the recipes required. Loki hoped Thor hadn’t spent all of his money on baking provisions. And if he had, and the cookies didn’t go according to plan and it turned out he’d wasted his money, then that was his problem. Loki wasn’t going to lend him any more.

Loki dumped a final armful of food and equipment onto the counter. He glanced over at Stephen. Stephen had turned the page of the book to the recipe. There was a new picture of the chef opposite it. She looked like she’d accidentally swallowed something she’d only ever joked about eating, and now it was stuck in her throat and she was panicking.

Stephen unwrapped a second chocolate while he looked at the pages. But he didn’t seem to be reading it. He was just staring at it. He was staring through it, as if the book wasn’t there at all. He looked exhausted.

“She looks like she’s on something,” Stephen finally said about the chef, as he blinked and regained himself.

He popped the chocolate into his mouth and chewed it. “That really is good,” he mumbled around a mouthful of alien chocolate.

“She does,” Loki agreed, referring to the hideous looking chef who had one hand clutched around her throat and the other one pressed over her heart. “Maybe she’s relying on chemical support to get through the photo shoot for this book.”

“A Chemical Christmas. I like it.”

“She doesn’t.”

“She’s out of her mind on god knows what. She’ll like anything that’s put in front of her.”

“You say that as if you’ve had first hand experience.”

“Ask me another time about the case of Strung Out Sally and her Special Sandwiches. It will put you off of sandwiches for life, trust me.”

And Loki did. Even if it was to do with a stupid throwaway comment like that, Loki trusted Stephen absolutely. No-one else came close to him. No-one ever would. No-one else would be willing to spend the immediate aftermath of a horrible and exhausting battle in a cramped kitchen with him baking cookies from a book that should be at the top of the universe’s forbidden book list. Stephen should be relaxing. He should be recovering. He should be doing something he wanted to do in a place that he wanted to be in with a person he wanted to be with.

“You can sit in the living room,” Loki said. “I relieve you of baking duties.”

Stephen paused in his unwrapping of another chocolate. “I’m not going to stick my fingers in the batter without washing them first if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You’re tired. And you clearly don’t want to be here. I’m now giving you the opportunity to escape. I suggest you take it.”

Stephen sidled up closer to him. “I don’t want Thor to be poisoned from cookies you’ve baked by yourself. It will be too much hassle to organize a funeral at this time of the year, so, I think I’ll stay.”

Loki’s gaze bored into the ash black words printed onto the book’s stained pages. “Is that the only reason?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“You need adult supervision.”

“When one arrives, please let me know. I’d love to meet them.”

“Have you turned the oven on yet?”

Loki muttered something under his breath and turned the oven on.

They looked at each other. There were precious minutes available to them while they waited for the oven to heat up. Perhaps they could use this time to do something more fun together.

“I’ve just thought of something,” Loki said, in the teasing, drawling tone that never failed to snag Stephen’s attention. He arranged his expression into something suitably alluring. “Something that requires our combined attention.”

“Do we have to use this book?” Stephen asked, his head down. He was looking at his phone.

“Excuse me?”

“To bake cookies from.”

“You said it yourself that Thor would know,” Loki snapped. He folded his arms across his chest. Fine. They’d spent the next few minutes talking instead. “The things Thor doesn’t know would take several lifetimes to list, but somehow he would know if the cookies didn’t come from this book.”

“Look at this,” Stephen said, holding out his phone.

Loki did not look at the phone. “Why are you ignoring me?”

“I’m unable to perform the impossible.”

“What-”

“There’s a bunch of cookie recipes on the internet we could follow instead. And none of them have pictures of a chef drawn by someone who was on strong medication themselves. Except…”

Stephen’s eyes were glued to his phone. His face looked like it was at the start of a slow slide into sharp frustration and irrevocable hopelessness.

“Where’s the goddamn recipe? I’ve scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page and can’t find it.”

Loki snatched the phone out of his hand. “If you want something done…”

Loki scrolled to the top of the page. He scrolled down it. He felt his face contort into something matching Stephen’s expression.

“There is no recipe,” he said. “Just a history lesson about her life. She was discovered as a child walking barefoot in the woods, abandoned, before being raised in a dairy farm, where she learnt to speak and love and trust again. She then put herself through law school and won several awards in defence of human rights, before the injustices of the world bruised her heart one too many times and she quit. She travelled the world and learnt to cook the food of what seems like every culture in existence. Then she returned home, married, had four kids, and studied for a cooking qualification at night while by day she looked after her family and wrote legal papers that changed the course of the legal system as we know it. She converted her childhood dairy farm into a restaurant and won worldwide acclaim and awards. And now she wants to share the secret of Christmas cookies with us if we click on this link.”

Loki looked up at Stephen. Before he could say anything, Stephen cast the diagnostic spell again. It sunk through the phone and scanned each atom that made up each pixel. The scan came back clear.

“We’re not following this,” Loki said.

“Hell no,” Stephen agreed. “I trust the scan, but I don’t trust her.”

“The only way you can get the recipe is if you sign up to her online cooking school,” Loki said, as he looked back at the phone. “You have to put your credit card information in. And sign some kind of legal disclaimer exempting her from what seems like every crime it’s possible to commit on Earth.”

There was a pause.

“I’d hire her as my lawyer in a heartbeat,” Loki said.

“You think she was actually a lawyer?” Stephen asked. “I don’t buy it. I think she once worked in a legal office, popped out one too many kids, and is now sitting in her parent’s basement daydreaming about what could have been.”

“Parent’s basement? More like a shed at the bottom of the garden.”

“With a leaky roof and intermittent wi-fi. She has to leech off the neighbours’ connection.”

“And because she feels guilty about it, she’ll leave a plate of cookies on their doorstep.”

“The neighbours ignore it.”

“The wild animals ignore it.”

The oven let out a loud beep to inform them that the requested temperature had been met.

Loki and Stephen smiled fondly at each other. Mocking idiots was the third best thing they did with their mouths.

“Read the recipe from the book to me,” Loki ordered. “I’ll follow it.”

He wanted Stephen to do as little work here as possible.

“Don’t you trust me?”

Loki also didn’t want Stephen to struggle opening packets and unscrewing jars and measuring precise amounts. When he was tired the dexterity of his hands decreased further and his irritability jumped. They both knew this. And they would both rather die than say it out loud.

“I want you to stand there and look pretty for me,” Loki said. “Give me some motivation to get through this.”

“Like a good little housewife?”

“‘Good’ is a generous term when describing yourself.”

Stephen hovered by the open book. He read out the recipe step by step, while Loki created the cookie mixture.

“‘And if a tear drop of happiness happens to make its way into the mixture,’” Stephen quoted, “‘Embrace it! Spike your cookies with your own delicious personal flavour!’”

Stephen straightened up. “Christ.”

He unwrapped another chocolate. “How many drops of happiness have you contaminated the mixture with?”

“Ten thousand,” Loki shot back.

“Disappointing.”

“The day is still young.”

“It’s afternoon.”

“And it will soon be evening if you don’t get back to work and tell me what to do next.”

Stephen finished eating the chocolate. His voice was rich and low. “Your wish is my command.”

Goddamn him. Why did he have to say it like that? Why did he want to distract and fluster him? Because it would be fun for him, that’s why. Jerk. Loki hated him. Loki didn’t want him to stop.

Loki turned to Stephen and made eye contact. That was a mistake. Loki’s desire must be obvious, from his heated face to all over his body.

“Looking a bit flushed there,” Stephen said with relish. “Was it something I said?”

“How long do they go in the oven for?” Loki asked, gesturing to a field of baking trays with blobs of cookie mixture on them.

“Ten minutes.”

Loki turned around and opened the oven door. He bent down. He made sure to take his time slotting all of the trays into the oven. He wondered if Stephen was enjoying the view.

He stood up, closed the door, set the timer, and turned around.

“You look hungry,” Loki said, pleased.

Stephen tilted his head.

“So am I,” Loki said, as he walked slowly towards the love of his life. “I’ve been working hard, and deserve a treat. I think I’ll have...”

He leaned towards Stephen, angling his face, and then, just as his lips were about to come into contact with skin, he turned sharply and stretched out a hand to the counter.

“One of these chocolates.”

He picked up the bag. It was empty. The seductive look fell off his face.

“You’ve eaten them all? What happened to using them as toppings for the cookies? What happened to saving one for me?”

The look that blossomed onto Stephen’s face went a long way to mollifying Loki. It was an expression that he rarely wore. It was one of pure, horrified, unexpected guilt.

“Well,” Loki said, making sure to exaggerate how stoic he sounded after being wounded so deeply, “You’ll just have to make it up to me, won’t you.”

The tortured expression was immediately wiped off of Stephen’s face. That was disappointing. Loki wanted to enjoy it for a bit longer. But it seemed that Stephen’s powerful mind had already calculated the best way to pay Loki back.

Stephen leaned forward and kissed him.

It was a light, chaste, closed mouth kiss. Loki’s disappointment began to team up with irritation. If Stephen thought this was good enough, he had another thing coming. Loki wouldn’t let him get away with this. Loki wouldn’t stand for it. Loki wouldn’t-

Stephen angled his head, and slowly opened Loki’s lips with his tongue. Without thinking about it, Loki opened his mouth wider. He felt Stephen’s hands on his waist. Stephen’s tongue slid into his mouth effortlessly, like it was returning to where it belonged. But along with Stephen’s familiar wet heat, there was something else. Something sharper; something richer; a transfer of flavour that-

Oh.

Oh it was the chocolate. Stephen was giving him the last one. The one that he had put in his mouth but hadn’t yet eaten.

Loki put one hand around the back of Stephen’s neck and sunk the other one into his hair. It was possessive, needy, grateful. It was one of his many gestures that spoke more fluently than any of his polished sentences ever could.

Loki sucked Stephen’s tongue into his mouth. And kept it there. If neither of them ever moved again, he could live happily with that. He felt warm, electric, hungry, satisfied. He felt completed in every way that counted.

The priceless chocolate melted. Loki swallowed it as best he could, aware that he could be drooling down both of their necks and not caring in the slightest. He’d lick Stephen clean afterwards regardless.

Dimly, Loki heard the oven’s timer go off. That couldn’t have been ten minutes. The oven must be broken. The cookies needed to stay in for longer. He made a gesture with his hand to cast a silencing spell. The timer alarm stopped.

If Stephen had noticed this, he didn’t make a move to reverse it. What he did do was kiss Loki properly, with purpose and love and undivided attention. Loki dug his fingers in hard and lost himself to it.

Soon there was no taste of chocolate left. Just the taste of Stephen.

The best taste in the world.

=======

“‘Follow this simple* recipe for perfect** Christmas cookies,’” Loki read out loud from the book propped open on the kitchen counter, “‘and you’re guaranteed,*** absolutely guaranteed,**** to create a treat that will startle, delight and amaze your guests!!!’”

*a highly subjective term exempt from strict definition  
**a highly subjective term exempt from strict definition  
***not a guarantee  
****absolutely not a guarantee


End file.
